OK, OK, I give!

The answer is (drumroll here)...........UNIVERSITIES
Ebbie got it right out of the chute, with a little hedging; Peace the first to get it unequivically.

Many of your answers were very creative, especially catspaw49's. It was fun watching pdq parse out the answer. Stanford & CalTech are the two private universities from California. The other seven each are members of the University of California system. While they are under the UC umbrella, they are largely autonomous, and have their own curricular specialties. My alma mommy, UCLA, ranks 12th, if I remember aright. It was lower, but then I graduated and they jumped way up.

Thank you all for participating.

The reason I was looking this up this subject is that American school kids K-12 seem to be lagging the rest of the known world, but our colleges and universities are, by and large, the envy of the world.

The anomaly is, to me, how can our schools be allegedly so poor, our colleges so good, and how are these students able to meet the challenge of these world class institutions?

I believe part of the problem is that we teach all of our children as if they're going to go to college, and most aren't...for whatever reason. Fifty-plus years ago, when I was in high school, most kids were not expected to go to college; the schools, recognizing this fact, had curriculum for vocational and commercial students, which had math and science courses geared for that type of work. I don't believe there is much of that now.

That is only one of the reasons, but it is the one that resonates most with me. Some might think we don't spend enough on the schools, others might think we spend too much. Perhaps some of the problem is that we have too many non-English speakers, but some of those do esceedingly well, learning English very quickly. Some might blame top heavy administration, some teachers' unions.

JotSC